Barbarian-Imperial World Order (Prof. James Petras) |
http://www.globalresearch.ca/barbarism-in-words-and-deeds-barbarism-of-u-s-imperial-wars-is-unmatched/5549133
Barbarism in Words and Deeds. Barbarism of U.S. Imperial Wars is Unmatched
By Prof. James Petras
Global Research, October 03, 2016
“What Russia is sponsoring and doing [in Syria] is not counter-terrorism it is barbarism” Samantha Power, US Representative to the United Nations
The US representative to the United Nations, Ambassador ‘Ranting Sam’ Samantha Power, accused the Russian and Syrian governments of ‘barbarism’, claiming Moscow or Damascus had attacked an unarmed United Nations humanitarian convoy delivering aid to civilians in Aleppo. No evidence was presented. Rants and threats do not require facts or proof; they only require vehement emotional ejaculations and compliant mass propaganda organs.
‘Barbarians’, to be clear, evoke images of leaders and groups, which abjure all civilized norms and laws. They only respond to armed force.
In the present context Power’s charges of barbarism against Russia and Syria was used to justify the US aerial bombardment of a Syrian army outpost, which killed and maimed almost 200 government troops engaged in combating ISIS terrorists and jihadi invaders.
In other words, accusing Syrian soldiers of ‘barbarism’ was Ambassador Power’s cynical way of dehumanizing the young victims of an earlier and deliberate US war crime.
Let’s analyze the appropriate context for the use and abuse of the language of ‘barbarism’ – and its rightful application.
Barbarism: the Deed
Over the past decade and a half, the US and its allies have invaded, occupied, killed, wounded and dispossessed over ten million people, in countries from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. Military and civilian officials have systematically destroyed entire economies, fostered ethno-religious wars, undermined ancient community and family ties and placed corrupt political puppets in power.
Promoted by the US, torture, arbitrary arrest and incarceration have become the norm creating lawless and chaotic societies, which had once been productive and stable. The shredding of social structures has provokes massive population flight, with millions of desperate refugees fleeing invasions, wars and total society breakdown. The result of these deliberate imperial policy decisions has been emptied cities and neighborhoods, broken families, destroyed lives and futures for many millions of young Arabs and Muslims.
As the human toll mounts and Western Europe is flooded with the results of US aggressive wars, the imperialists have sharpened their shrill rhetoric, labeling all of their adversaries and critics as ‘accomplices in war crimes’, and ‘barbarians’.
The greater and more sustained the policy of wanton imperial pillage, the more intense the frustration of its leaders over its ultimate failures, and the greater the recourse of its ‘diplomats’ to vituperative language. [vituperative = harshly critical / scathing ]
Barbarism in Search of Barbarians:
[DIAGRAM AT SOURCE]
The principal adversaries to US aggression, Russia, China and Iran, have not invaded any sovereign countries, nor have they provoked the desperate flight of millions of refugees. Russia was invited to aid its Syrian government ally confronting an invasion of terrorist mercenaries who are intent on dividing the country. Crimea peacefully re-joined Russia via elections. Moscow rejected playing any military role in support of Western wars against Iraq, Yemen and Libya. None of this rose to the level of US-EU barbarism.
In Asia, the West has invaded and devastated Viet Nam, the Philippines and Afghanistan. Japan, now a US ally, had invaded China, Korea and Southeast Asia. China for its part has not engaged in any imperial war of conquest for centuries.
Iran has not invaded any country in modern times. On the contrary, Iraq invaded Tehran in the 1980’s with US support and waged a decade-long war which caused millions of casualties.
In truth, if waging wars, staging invasions, destroying whole societies and causing millions of deaths are the measure of barbarism, then the US, Europe and Japan have been clearly barbaric.
To claim otherwise and follow the ranting script of Ambassador Samantha Power is to enter into a tunnel of hallucinations where the language of liberal values embellishes truly barbarian acts.
The entire language of politics has been perverted and converted into an artifice of self-delusion. Terrorist militias are re-packaged as ‘rebels’ and ‘moderates’, spreading barbarism from the imperial Western center to the periphery. The deliberate spread of terrorism is itself a barbaric deed, which degrades the status of Western powers.
Conclusion
In ancient Greece, the barbarians were those outside of the empire who did not speak the language of civilization. They were savage invaders seeking to pillage the wealth and culture of the empire. Today the barbarians emerge from inside the empire and spread outward. The imperial leaders have engaged in serial wars of destruction and pillage, even as their own societies and economies wallow in ignorance, misery, debt, addiction and criminality. Imperial barbarians devastate whole cultures, erasing the great historical legacy of ancient civilizations like Iraq and Syria, while imposing their culture of morons, drugs and electronic gadgets, which has already infantilized its own population.
The empire of barbarians is infested with moneychangers and corrupt speculators. They have debased the entire legal system and legislative bodies. The public space has become a private latrine for the elite, closed to any real public discourse and debate.
Electoral spectacles, rather than reasoned debates, undermine republican principles. Imperial conquerors, enmeshed in a military metaphysic, cannot reconstruct a devastated society into a productive colony, nor can they learn or benefit from the best and brightest among its captives, as Rome did with Greece, because it has sown such destruction and salted the very soil under the feet of its conquered peoples.
The barbarian-imperial world order is constantly at war with ‘others’ and can never assimilate and learn from the precious human treasures it has so wantonly destroyed. It rules by terror abroad and deceit at home. As so crudely displayed by the imperial rants of Ambassador Samantha Power, its oratory at international forums reflect the hysteria of mediocre functionaries: mindless barbarians raving among themselves in marbled echo chambers.
In the end, the imperial barbarians will be besieged by their own fleeing vassals and puppets. When they finally confront their own decay and internal dissolution they have to decide whether to engage in a last global conflagration or dismantle the imperial barbaric order and choose justice, law and civilization.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof. James Petras, Global Research, 2016 |
Wikipedia
Prof. James Petras
- B.A. from Boston University
- Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley
Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York
adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
published on Latin American and Middle Eastern political issues
received the Western Political Science Association's the Best Dissertation award (1968),
Career of Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association's Marxist Sociology Section
Robert Kenny Award for Best Book of 2002
author of:
over 62 books published in 29 languages
over 600 articles in professional journals, incl.
- American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology
- Social Research and Journal of Peasant Studies
published over 2000 articles
publications eg.
- New York Times
- The Guardian
- The Nation
- Christian Science Monitor
- Foreign Policy
- New Left Review
- Partisan Review
- Le Monde Diplomatique
previously wrote: Spanish daily, El Mundo
currently writes: monthly column Mexican newspaper, La Jornada
Founding member of the Young Socialist Alliance
Long history of commitment to social justice
Petras has worked directly with indigenous workers as an organizer, decades
- Brazilian Landless Workers Movement
- unemployed workers' movement in Argentina
Defended the rights of the indigenous in Latin America
Advised left-wing presidents:
- President Andreas Papandreou (Greece 1981-84)
- President Salvador Allende of Chile (1970–73)
- President Hugo Chávez
1973-76 Petras worked on the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Repression in Latin America
IRAQ
Referred to American policy towards Iraq as "The US/Iraqi Holocaust (UIH)"
"an ongoing process spanning the last 16 years (1990-2006) provides us with a striking example of state-planned systematic extermination, torture and physical destruction designed to de-modernize a secular developing society and revert it into a series of warring clan-tribal-clerical-ethnic based entities devoid of any national authority or viable economy."
IRAN
"Describing the struggle in Iran as pitting "high income, free market oriented capitalist individuals" reformists against Ahmadinejad's "working class, low income, community-based supporters of a 'moral economy'", he denounced the claim that the election was stolen as a "hoax" perpetrated by "Western opinion makers"."
MIDDLE EAST AGGRESSION
Petras alleged that "It was the massive infusion of financial contributions that allowed the [Zionist Power Configuration] (ZPC) to vastly expand the number of full-time functionaries, influence peddlers and electoral contributors that magnified their power – especially in promoting US Middle East wars, lopsided free trade agreements (in favor of Israel) and unquestioned backing of Israeli aggression against Lebanon, Syria and Palestine...No economic recovery is possible now or in the foreseeable future...while Zionist power brokers dictate US Mideast policies. [14][15]
2008 interview in which Petras stated that [U.S.] presidents are at the disposal of "Jewish power" [16] ... "the greatest threat to world peace and humanity." [17]
2008 interview ... "it’s one of the great tragedies that we have a minority that represents less than 2% of North American’s population but has such power in the communications media" and that the reason "why the North American public doesn’t react against the manipulations of this minority...[is] because the Jews control the communications media." [18]
2010 article ... Arab American News, Petras stated that:
"For the U.S. mass media the problem is not Israeli state terror, but how to manipulate and disarm the outrage of the international community. To that end the entire Zionist power configuration has a reliable ally in the Zionized Obama White House and U.S. Congress." [19]
Wikipedia
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COMMENT
That was such a good article I decided to look up Petras.
LOL ... I like his nickname for the capitalist oligarchy's human rights shill, Samantha Power: 'Raving Sam'.
Even though I'm not into the 'social justice' aspect of socialism, I like the idea of some aspects of socialism and I like the sound of Petras.
Might have to come back for another look tomorrow. Don't think I'll remember without doing that.
P.S. You don't need a doctorate to know Samantha Power & the capitalists are full of sh*t. LOL
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